Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Aurelia
The fresh spring was small, hidden behind a split in the rock that most of the others had passed without noticing. I’d only found it because I’d gone looking for a discreet place to relieve myself. Instead, I’d found a rounded pool big enough for two, filled with crystal clear water.
Keres stood behind me, torchlight painting her in amber. “Do we need to worry about serpents?”
“I think it’s safe to say it’s just us,” I said. “Look. You can see all the way to the bottom.”
She pressed in close beside me. “And the steam? Is that your addition?”
She glanced at my hand, but I held my empty palms up. “Nope. Must be a hot spring.”
She hesitated, still wary. “How hot?”
I bent down and put my hand in. Sighing, I said, “Perfect for sore muscles.” I pushed to my feet and started stripping out of my clothes. “Now, come on. You smell like blood and guts.”
“I could say the same,” she muttered, but her mouth tipped up in a smirk. “You first.”
I stripped off my armor piece by piece, setting each beside my swords.
The heat wrapped around me as I sank into the water, sighing as I sank to my shoulders.
The grime, the blood, the serpent’s ichor—all of it washed away in streaks that clouded the water for a heartbeat before the spring cleared itself.
Keres followed, wincing at the heat before easing in across from me. The torch she’d set into a crevice burned low, its light refracting across the rippling surface.
For a while, we just sat there. Letting the silence stretch.
Finally, Keres said, “So. That’s two gifts from the gods.”
I huffed out a laugh. “You’re counting?”
“Your tattoo glowed,” she said. “Hard not to notice there are three stars. What’s the third?”
“I don’t know yet,” I admitted. “So far, there’s only been the furyfire and the death magic.”
Her brow lifted. “Is that what you call it?”
I shrugged. “It’s what Sonoma—my mother—called it. The oracle called it Makarios. The gift of life.”
“In the old language, we would call it ?θανασ?α.”
“What does it mean?”
“Athanasia. Immortal.”
I looked away. The oracle had said as much, but I’d been categorically ignoring that fact ever since she’d told me.
“The Withered nearly pissed themselves watching it happen,” Keres added, clearly entertained by it.
I dragged a hand through my tangled hair, water dripping down my arms. “Do you think they’ll change their minds about helping us?”
“If they do, they are fools.”
I didn’t answer. I appreciated her support, but I couldn’t expect the entire realm to share her open-minded acceptance. Not when they’d been raised to believe the Fates were good and the Furiosities were evil.
Ironically, only the Midnight Court—a kingdom I’d once believed was filled with horrible monsters—understood that darkness didn’t equal evil.
I looked up and found Keres studying me.
“What?” I asked warily.
She tilted her head. “What did it feel like? Taking the serpent’s life force?”
“Like… a drink of water after a week in the desert,” I admitted. “Like every cell in my body was being rewritten. And when it was over, I wasn’t sure if I’d done something right or something unforgivable.”
“Did it hurt?”
“Not exactly. It was more like… remembering something I shouldn’t know. Something old.” I met her eyes across the water. “It doesn’t feel like my furyfire. It was colder. Sharper. It felt alive.”
She nodded slowly.
“They’re afraid,” she said simply. “Afraid of what they don’t understand. You didn’t ask for this. You’re just using what you’ve got to keep us alive. That makes it a weapon, not a curse.”
“A weapon forged by gods who delight in ruin.”
Even if those gods were my blood relatives.
“Maybe.” She shrugged. “But ruin can be useful, depending on where you point it.”
For some reason, her words made me think of what Rydian had said to me. I am a weapon aimed at your enemies. Wield me how you see fit.
I sank deeper into the water, letting her words settle. “You really don’t think it’s evil?”
“I think good and evil are stories we tell ourselves to sleep better at night,” she said. “What you did back there was survival. And survival’s not evil—it’s necessary.”
I studied her in the steam. “Spoken like a fellow survivor.”
Her expression flickered. For a moment, I thought she’d deflect. But she surprised me.
“I was born outside the wall,” she said. “Midnight’s borderlands. My parents were scouts—hunters, really. We lived close enough to Concordia that we could taste the frost in the air. One night, two Obsidians attacked our home. I was six.”
Her tone was flat, like she was reciting from a history book instead of her own life. “Back then, we didn’t even know what they were. Or how to kill them. My father tried to fight. My mother hid me in a hollow under the floorboards. I heard them die. It wasn’t quick.”
My heart ached as she went on.
“After they left, a snowstorm blew in, and early the next morning, the roof collapsed. Snow came down, and I couldn’t dig out. I remember thinking, so this is what it feels like to die a slow death.”
“Keres…”
She shook her head, not looking at me. “I managed to dig myself closer to the surface before I passed out from dehydration. A pack of glimfangs found me. Thought I was an easy meal at first. Then I bit one back, so they decided I was worth keeping.”
I blinked. “You bit a Glimfang?”
“They were going to eat me,” she said dryly. “It was self-defense.”
Despite the story, I smiled. “So, what, they took you in as one of their own?”
“For a while. Two years, maybe. They’re smarter than people think.
Pack creatures. They fed me, protected me, taught me how to hunt.
The only threat they feared was Obsidians, and the mountains were crawling with them by then.
We migrated south into the Trolech, but eventually even that became overrun.
The pack was attacked and forced to split up as we fled.
I never found them again. Then Daegel found me. ”
She went quiet.
“He brought you back to the cabin,” I guessed.
“Dragged me, more like. I was feral. Didn’t speak for weeks. The others didn’t know what to do with me. Thorne was the first one I trusted. Taught me how to speak properly again.” She smirked faintly. “He’s been regretting it ever since.”
“Is that how you got the scars? From the pack?”
“They taught me to fight like one of them,” she said. “And don’t worry, I gave as good as I got.”
I smiled, but it faded quickly. “You lost everything. And you still chose to fight for this realm.”
She shrugged. “What else am I going to do? Sit around, waiting for the world to fix itself? People like us don’t get to be soft. We just keep moving.”
“You make it sound simple.”
“It’s the only way I know.”
The steam curled between us, hazing her scars until they almost disappeared.
“Sometimes I worry they’re not wrong,” I said quietly.
“Who?”
“The Withered. The ones who look at me and see something monstrous.”
Keres arched a brow. “You are monstrous. All great leaders are. The difference is what you do with it.”
I laughed under my breath. “Comforting.”
“You won’t get comfort from me, but if that’s what you seek, I have an idea where you can get it.” She smirked.
I scowled. “Shut up.”
She snickered.
The warmth seeped into my bones, loosening the ache in my chest that hadn’t eased since that moment I’d scorched Duron to dust. When I knew the rest of the realm would hear of it and know exactly what I was.
The steam shimmered between us, turning gold in the torchlight.
I leaned my head back against the stone. “You know, I never really had any real friends growing up. This is nice.”
“Just don’t start braiding my hair or talking about feelings, and we’ll be fine.”
“Is that why you chose all those males to be friends with?”
“I wish. You’d be surprised how many feelings they have.”
I laughed at that.
For a moment, it almost felt normal—two women soaking sore muscles, trading stories, pretending the world outside didn’t exist. The laughter faded, but the quiet that followed wasn’t heavy.
It was… easy.
Keres pushed out of the water first, steam rolling off her as she reached for her cloak. “We should get back. Rydian gets cranky when he worries.”
I nodded, standing and wading out after her. The air bit colder on my wet skin, but it felt good. Alive.
We dressed quickly.
Keres strapped her daggers back into place, watching me with that measuring look of hers. “You know they’ll keep whispering about you,” she said.
“I know.”
“Let them. They’ll see soon enough what you are.”
“And what’s that?”
Her smirk turned wolfish. “The thing of Heliconia’s nightmares.”
I didn’t have an answer for that, but the fire inside me stirred at her words. It wanted to prove them right.
When we stepped back into the tunnels, my chest felt lighter.
For the first time in a long while, I wasn’t just fighting for the realm or for prophecy.
I was fighting alongside someone who saw me—not the curse, not the chosen one—just me.
Rydian had made me feel seen too, but he’d always wanted something in return.
Keres didn’t want anything from me except equal treatment as friends.
And gods help anyone who’d try to take that from either of us.